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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. JLlS Copyright No 
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




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Hn Hrtist Ibistonan 



An Essay 



WILLIAM JACKSON ARMSTRONG 



With an Introduction 



BY 



CHARLES B. GALBREATH 

state Libra7-ian of Ohio 
President, National Association of State Librarians 



COLUMBUS, OHIO 
S. F. HARRIMAN 

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TVv^O COPIES RECEiVao 

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Office of 11^ ^ 

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Copyright, in iSgg, bv 
WILLIAM JACKSON ARMSTRONG 



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INTRODUCTION. 

By Charles B. Gai. breath, 

State Librarian of Ohio ; Pre side )it of tJu National 
Association of State Librarians. 

In an age of " man}' books " the general 
reader finds it convenient, and in a meas- 
ure necessary, to depend upon the critique 
or book review as a guide to the literature 
that, according to liis standard, will be 
found worth reading. Especially is this 
true in regard to history and its related 
branches, geography, travel, and biog- 
raphy. One desires first to know, before 
reading a voluminous work, that it has a 
substantial basis in fact, that it exhibits, on 
the whole, a consistent fidelity to truth, 
that it is not shaped by policy, or dis- 
torted by fear, or marred by narrowness, 
or warped by prejudice. Fortunate is he 
if he does not have to unlearn, not only 
wdiat he "learns amiss," but what others 
have learned amiss. In this department of 

3 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

literature many books have been written 
for the sole purpose of correcting error. 

As suggested in the following pages, it 
is often only through a long perspective 
that we get the true measure of men and 
events. After the flight of twenty-five 
centuries, history does justice to *' the 
divine Sappho," the calumny of the Greek 
comedians falls before impartial investiga- 
tion, and the Lesbian queen of letters 
stands forth as queen of her kind in that 
far-off day when the world was young. 
In the light of modern research, Constan- 
tine is diminished, Charlemagne is exalted, 
and even the domestic virtues of Moham- 
med are recognized. Coming down to 
the Colonial period of our own history, 
we behold in Nathaniel Bacon, the leader 
of rebellion in the Old Dominion, tlie 
patriot and martyr. It is only in the 
closing days of the century that we are 
learning to survey dispassionately our own 
Revolution, and to acknowledge to its full 
extent the debt of gratitude we owe France 



IN TRODUL TION. 5 

for the aid that made success possible in 
that unequal struggle. Writers and tlie 
reading public are generally rising to a 
genuine appreciation of impartial history. 
This is as it should he. Why should the 
muse withhold her reward through the 
centuries ? She will not do so if her vo- 
taries are diligent to seek and bold to 
speak the truth. 

Next to the essential of authenticity is 
literary style. Judged by either standard, 
the works of Doctor John Lord must be ac- 
corded a high rank. In tlie following 
pages full justice is ch^ne them in the dis- 
criminating essay by William Jackson 
Armstrong. Without his knowledge, and 
at the request ol his publisher alone, it is 
my privilege to write this Introduction. 
Mr. Armstrong is qualified in niany ways 
to write such a review. He was for years 
personally acquainted with Doctor Lord, 
and has critically lead almost everything 
that the eminent historian has written. A 
man of culture and a platform orator him- 



INTRODUCTION. 



self, his reading and studies have taken a 
^ide range. A number of printed lec- 
tures, magazine articles, and poems, bear 
testimony to the fact that he is a literary 
artist of no mean ability. For years a 
newspaper correspondent at the national 
capital, and afterward, under the Admin- 
istration of President Grant, Inspector of 
United States Consulates for Europe, his 
opportunities have been exceptional for 
that comprehensive survey of the world's 
history that he praises in Dr. Lord. It 
ds to be hoped that this literary venture, 
which ranks well with the essays it gener- 
ously and justly commends, may meet 
with such a reception as to encourage its 
somewhat diffident author to further 
effort in a field where his studies and ob- 
servation have fitted him to speak " as one 
having authority." 




AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

H\ William Jackson Armstrong. 

It is not vet five years since the death 
»;f Doctor John Lord, a man pecnliar in 
physical attributes, insignificant in per- 
son, awkward in bearing, and a stam- 
merer in s|)eech, vet informed with an 
intelligence and aspiration so lofty that 
he died leaving behind Irim accomplish- 
ment equaled by that of but few Amer- 
icans. 

For the last forty years of his life Dr. 
Lord made his home at the village of 
Stamford, Connecticut, from which 
point he passed out on his nnceasing 
lecture tours, addressing tens of thou- 



From T/ie' Methodist Re^'ie^v, New York, Novem- 
ber, 1899. 

7 



8 /iN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

sands of his countrymen, making his 
figure and his literary work familiar 
throughout the length and breadth of 
the land. He was nearly equally well 
known in England. Attention to his 
work, temporarily diverted for a brief 
interval succeeding his death, through 
the absence of his unique personality, 
is beginning to he recalled in full meas- 
ure by the solidity and worth as well as 
by the brilliancy of his literary remains. 
His works, published in completed 
form and showing the man in his real 
intellectual proportions, are now being 
sought for by thousands of readers on 
both sides of the Atlantic. The fact is 
gratifying to the lovers of elevating lit- 
erature everywhere. 

Next to the poet and essayist, who 
deal with elemental ideas and human 
emotions, may be ranked as literary 
benefactors the artist historians, the 
writers who, like Thucydides and Taci- 



JOHN LORD. 9 

tus and Hume and Gibbon and Macaii- 
la}', present the facts of the past in such 
attractive robes of speech that their 
narratives remain lasting- possessions to 
our kind. Though the interval which 
has elapsed since his death and the ap- 
pearance of the full body of his works 
has not been suf^cient to give his 
achievement the benefit of this perma- 
nent perspective, there can hardl}' be a 
doubt that Dr. Lv)rd is destined to take 
high rank even among these greater 
gods of his literary class. And this will 
appear true whether he is judged by the 
volume of his contribution to historical 
Avriting or by the riches of thought and 
the quality of the diction in which he 
has embalmed his work. In this latter 
regard of a luminous and fascinating 
literary style, he is certainly exceeded 
by no American^ writer of history, 
whether it be Prescott, or Parkman, or 
Irving himself — or even our latest lumi- 



lo AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

nary, John Fiske ; and if Bancroft and 
Motley may be considered to take pre- 
cedence of him bv virtne of snstained 
efforts, covering whole periods of 
national history, the admirers of Dr. 
Lord may fairly claim that, in the sur- 
passing range of his historical studies, 
he has an advantage of even these 
acknowledged masters. In this respect, 
indeed, of extended investigation and 
varietv of themes, Dr. Lord stands alone, 
without a peer or competitor in the 
entire list of historical essayists. It is 
safe to believe, in fact, that with the 
exceptions only of jNIacaulay and the 
late Spanish Castelar, no other modern 
literary student has looked so familiarly 
as he over the long perspective of the 
world's events. 

Dr. LcM'd's earlv discipline for his life- 
work as a literary man was of the loose 
and desultory sort which is the frequent 
antecedent of the career of genius. It 



JOHN LORD. II 

is the instinct of winged talent to soar to 
its purpose even after many falls from 
attempted flight. Such was the expe- 
rience of the young historian in his 
school and college years. Born in the 
old town of Portsmouth, New Hamp- 
shire, in the year 1810, he received his 
flrst rudiments of education under the 
severe and somewhat repugnant meth- 
ods of the old-fashioned private school 
of that gloomy half Calvinistic period of 
New Eno^land histor\'. He confesses 
in the partially Avritten account of his 
own life that his school days were not 
happy, and that, being addicted to 
shirking his tasks, he rarely escaped one 
whipping a day, and sometimes got two, 
until his hand became " as hard as a 
sailor's." His experiences at home were 
hardly more exhilarating, under the 
tutelage of his pious Calvinistic mother, 
who, he records, brought up her chil- 
dren in the old-fashioned orthodox way 



12 AN y^RTlST HISTORIAN. 

to " attend meeting three times on Sun- 
day besides going- to Sunday-school," 
and, as that day " was supposed to begin 
on Saturday at sundown, no books could 
be read until Monday except such works 
as Baxter's ' Saint's Rest,' Bunyan's 
' Pilofrim's Pros^ress,' Taylor's ' Holy 
Living,' with the ' Boston Recorder ' for 
lio^hter readino^." 

Removhig with his parents in his 
tenth year to the little town of Ber- 
wick, in the neighborhood of Ports- 
mouth, young Lord continued his 
studies in the village academy under 
instructors who were described by him 
as having *' pedantry without learning" 
and " yigor without discipline," until, at 
the end of six years, he left the institu- 
tion, as he acknowledofes, without bav- 
ing made any acquisitions except a 
repugnance to the stud}^ of Latin and 
Greek and a kn(Avledge of mythology 
obtained from Lempriere's Dictionary. 



JOHN LORD. 13 

A year or two later, in 1829, he was 
sent by his parents to Dartmouth Col- 
lege, the great northern seat of New 
England learning, presided over, at that 
time, by his distinguished uncle, Nathan 
Lord, erudite in his generation, but who 
has been pictured as, after the manner 
of college presidents of the period, a 
" disciplinarian rather than a teacher," 
and as a '' rigid Calvinist who accepted 
all the deductions to which that system 
logically led." Calvinism, indeed, ap- 
pears to have been the creed under 
whose shadow and influence the future 
historian was destined to begin and end 
his intellectual novitiate. And never 
did a somber theological mantle fall 
upon a more joyous and magnanimous 
spirit than in the case of this artist- 
chronicler of the world's events; for, 
while accepting, to the last, in theology, 
like his distinguished uncle and instruct 
tor, the postulates and deductions of a 



14 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

rigid and time-worn theology, Doctor 
Lord, as the mature essayist and philoso- 
pher, treated all systems of faith and 
the followers of all creeds with a charity 
and tolerance as catholic as the needs 
of historical judgment. And only per- 
haps in the direction of impatience of 
rationalistic criticism, impairing the 
authority of Revelation itself, did his 
peculiar theology narrow him. But who 
will venture to den}- that, as a professed 
believer in that Revelation upon whose 
integrity the whole body of historical 
theology must stand, or through whose 
even partial discredit it must fall, he 
was rigidly consistent? It is surely 
not the swarm of modern doctors of 
theology, who weakly consent to the 
compromise of rationalism with faith, 
that can assume the role of his critics 
here. 

Four years at Dartmouth and three 
years additional spent at Andover Theo- 



JOHN LORD. 15 

logical Seminar}^ whither he rcp^iircd 
at the end of his literary course to pre- 
pare himself for the ministry, which he 
had chosen as his vocation, completed 
young Lord's formal education for en- 
trance into the world. But even these 
yearSp to his lasting regret, as he con- 
fesses in his autobiography, were not 
devoted to the steady discipline of aca- 
demic training. Tliey had been broken 
with frequent and alternating episodes 
of school-teaching and experimental 
and vagrant lecture-tours; while, with 
the waywardness and indolence of his 
perverse genius in these younger years, 
he had, during the intervening period 
in college, systematically shirked all 
uncongenial studies and occupied him- 
self in the college libraries with omniv- 
orous reading, especially along the line 
of history and historical criticism, 
which, in spite of his predilection tow- 
ard theology as a profession, seemed 



t6 an artist historian. 

from the beginnins^ to be his native 
bent. But who shall dictate the disci- 
pline or the method through which that 
extraordinary intellectual endowment 
which we call genius shall arrive at its 
triumphant end ? 

Emerging- from the Andover Divinity 
School with the credentials of his chosen 
calling in his possession, in spite of his 
"ignorance of liebrew," young Lord, 
for the period of three years, experi- 
mented with his career, partly as a 
travelinor ao:ent and lecturer of the 
American Peace Society, and partly in 
trying to establish himself in the pro- 
fession of the ministrv. The experiment 
in both directions was attended with 
harassing and often comical vicissi- 
tudes. Success was qualified with too 
frequent disappointments to make his 
selected vocation satisfactory. The cast 
of his talents was distinctly moral and 
didactic, but the career of a theological 



JOHN LORD. 17 

teacher along conventional lines was 
evidently not in accord with the funda- 
mental bent of his intellect. In his 
school years, neglecting whatever other 
studies, he had persistently cultivated 
rhetoric and the arts of expression. His 
instincts w^erc literary and for historical 
investigation. It was his genius, his 
destiny. Fully conscious of this at last, 
he "decided about this period," says his 
formal biographer, " to adopt the pro- 
fessi(^n of historical lecturer as his life- 
work." 

Writing retrospectively of this reso- 
lution in later years, he says : '' I felt 
that in some important res[)ects thus far 
I v\'as a failure and never could do any- 
thing or be anything so long as I pur- 
sued an uncon^^enial callinc: for wdiich I 
wasnot iitted. I then took the advice of 
some of my Andover friends and re- 
solved to labor in some other way 
wdiere duty and pleasure ran in the same 



1 8 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

line. I did not turn my back on the 
ministr}^ For forty }'ears afterwards, 
I preached wherever I was invited. I 
continued to revere a calling for which 
I was not adapted. 1 have always 
sought the society and friendship of 
ministers as the most learned, most use- 
ful, most sympathetic and most interest- 
ing class in the community. I resolved 
not to enter a strictly secular life, but 
to work in harmony with the profession 
in which I had been educated. As a 
lecturer on history I could bring to bear 
all my knowledge in defense of the 
truths of the Christian faith which I 
had never rejected nor even doubted. 
I thought I could be more useful to the 
church by advocating great fundamental 
truths in the lecture-room than in the 
pulpit; that I would thus be more free, 
untrammeled and bold, inasmuch as his- 
tory covers everything — rehgious dog- 
mas as well as science, politics, and art," 



JOHN LORD. 19 

From the time of takino- this resolu- 
tion, about the year 1840, his career was 
fixed. And never was a career more 
steadih^ and consistently followed ; and 
j-arely has one been extended through 
so long a range of brilliant usefulness to 
our kind. During a period of more 
than half a century succeedinir the 
adoption of his new work, Doctor Lord 
was not only a teacher of history, but a 
luminous expositor of its profoundest 
lessons, as the}^ were examined and 
portrayed by him under the search- 
light of a keen philosoph}^ and a strin- 
gent moral purpose. With the excep- 
tion of the time spent in his library in 
the necessary preparation of his mate- 
rials and his occasional visits to Europe 
to further the same end — to make his 
work solid and accurate — his life, during 
this entire period, covering more than a 
generation, was spent on the lecture- 
platform. In all the great cities of our 



20 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

continent, as well as in many of those of 
Great Britain, and in hundreds of our 
institutions of learning, larger and 
smaller, over the breadth of the land, 
he became in his yearly tours the recog- 
nized ap)Ostle and oracle of his great 
themes. For, to hear him speak was, 
for young and old, to catch his own hre 
and to receive lasting impressions and 
inspiration in connection with the char- 
acters and scenes of history which his 
eloquence pictured. And it is worthy 
of note that with Doctor Lord eloquence 
was a paradox of almost all its formal 
rules ; for, producing at times upon his 
audiences the effects of the great mas- 
ters of oratory, it was itself produced 
through a physical human instrument 
apparently the most inadequate and 
hopeless that ever essayed the difficult 
art of the platform. Under the teach- 
ings of a lecturer whose person was 
diminutive, whose o-estures were erratic 



JOHN LORD. 21 

movements of the arms ignoring all 
co-ordination with liis thought, and who 
read his notes in a frayed, unmusical 
voice interru.pted with a periodic tho- 
I'acic sneeze, audiences sat spell-bound. 
It was the genius, the intensity of the 
orator himself, the intellectual face, the 
luminous, humorous yet earnest eyes, 
the power of concentrated feeling, sur- 
mounting all the conventional formulas 
of attractive speech, and carrying the 
inspiration of his message straight to 
the brains and hearts of his listeners. 

It was not until the closing years of 
his life, which ended in December 1894, 
that Doctor Lord desisted from this half 
a century strain of platform oratory and 
retired to his always delightful Stam- 
ford home, to embodv in permanent and 
finished literary form the results of his 
life-work. When this was accomplished 
he had still a remaining year or two 
of enjoyable existence, passed with his 



2 2 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

family and in agreeable correspondence 
with his appreciative publishers, who 
had been from the beo:inninof his admir- 
ing" and devoted friends. Then, charac- 
teristicallv of the loftv spirit and phi- 
losophy which had always sustained him, 
he serenelv, almost cheerfully, turned 
his face toward what to him was the 
sunrise of real existence. It w^as the 
tranquil close of a rounded life in char- 
acter and accomplishment. 

Besides his one notable work, to 
which longer attention will be called. 
Doctor Lord's publications were his 
'' Modern Historv," " Ancient States and 
Empires," '' History of the United 
States," " The Old Roman World," and 
one or two text-books of history for 
schools and colleges. These all have 
their specific value and place in our cur- 
rent historical literature, but they are 
subordinate in importance, as they were 
in a sense preparatory to the one great 



JOHN LORD. .23 

achievement, his " Beacon Lii2:lits of 
History," the publication gathering into 
its compass the substantial fruits of his 
life, and destined, as it was by him de- 
signed, to be his literary monument. 
Of this splendid work it will be of in- 
terest to speak succinctly. 

"Beacon Lights" was the felicitous 
ascriptive phrase chosen by Doctor 
Lord when he came to the task of giving 
final embodiment to his entire series of 
historical lectures as they had been de- 
livered in his half-centur\' of platform 
experience. This task when finished 
filled the ten volumes of '* Beacon 
Lights " as they now appear, with about 
five hundred pages each of large and 
attractive print ; the respective volumes 
containing distinct and characteristic 
-groups of twelve lectures of the series 
whose themes, dating from the earliest 
annals of our race and ending with 
events of the current time, make the 



24 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

completed work of one hundred and 
twelve lectures a panoramic retrospect 
of human history. In these essays 
every period of the world's past is re- 
garded and epitomized, its own salient 
feature, or philosoph}-, being- in turn 
made luminous ; so that, fi'om the stand- 
point of the reader, histor}^ becomes, as 
in some wondrous transformation scene, 
a perspective of gleaming points lost to 
view only in the remote gloom of primi- 
tive ages ; the title of the volume being 
thus vindicated. In this phase the 
" Beacon Lights " series is unique, since, 
as has been already intimated, no other 
essa3^ist, remote or recent, has attempted 
at once so wide a survev or so complete 
an analysis of the spirit of historic 
epochs. 

There is still another feature peculiar 
to these volumes and commending them 
to the acceptance of the reader. Each 
epoch is delineated under the name of 



',«mv'\>- v^tWf. 




DK. .lOIIN LORD AT 45 YEAKS. 



JOHN LORD. 25 

its foremost character, or representa- 
tive ; as for example, " Life in the Four- 
teenth Century " is pictured in an essay 
on '' Geoff ry Chaucer"; the period of 
" Maritime Discoveries," under the 
Ijeading ''Christopher Columbus"; 
' Unsuccessful Reforms," under " Sa- 
^anarola"; and the "Revival of Art," 
under " Michael Angelo." The fascinat- 
ing quality of personal narrative is thus 
ient from first to last to what, in fact, 
arc almost unequaled treatises on the 
philosophy of history. As has been 
;',aid not inaptly ; " The charm of Doc- 
tor Lord's writing is that, while the 
reader unconsciously takes distinct im- 
pression of the growths and changes of 
great eras, his attention is consciously 
fixed by the stirring recitals, the char- 
acter-painting, the innumerable personal 
touches — the foibles, the failings, as 
well as the grand qualities — of illustrious 
men and women." 



2.6 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

It is this biographical method of 
treating" history, of grouping the events 
of a period nnder the shadow of the 
name representative of its distinctive 
tendency, or philosophy, that has drawn 
unusual attention to Doctor Lord's 
literary acomplishment. In the use of 
this method he has enjoyed the distinc- 
tion of being among American writers 
the pioneer ; and, combined with the 
exquisite pictorial art with which he 
has set forth his themes, it is the method 
which has secured the author's just 
fame. It is onlv necessary to note the 
contents of a single volume of these 
master studies to indicate the nearly 
phenomenal range over which the au- 
thor's \'ision swept and his genius illu- 
mined in their preparation. The initial 
volume ol the series, for instance, bear- 
ing the general title, *' Jewish Heroes 
and Prophets," includes the treatment 
of the following themes : '' Abraham, 



JOHN LORD. 27 

the Father of Religious Faith"; "Jo- 
seph, Israel in Egyptian Bondage"; 
** Moses, the Social and Moral Law " ; 
" Samuel, the Judges and Prophets "; 
'' David, Israelitish Conquests" ; "■ Solo- 
mon, the Glory of the Monarchy " ; 
*' Elijah, the Division of the Kingdom " ; 
" Isaiah, National Degeneracy " ; '' Jere- 
miah, the Fall of Jerusalem"; ''Esther 
and Mordecai, Hebrew Statesmen 
Abroad " ; " The Maccabees, the Heroic 
Age of Judaism " ; " Saint Paul, the 
Spread of Christianity." 

Succeeding this is the volume on 
'' Pagan Antiquit}^" containing essays 
on Cyrus, Socrates,' Phidias, Julius 
Caesar, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Con- 
stantine, Chrysostom, Saint Ambrose, 
Saint x\ugustine, and other representa- 
tive characters of the ancient world, 
made to stand for such phases of the 
general subject as " Asiatic Supremacy," 
" Greek Philosophy," " Greek Art," 



28 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

" Imperialism," *' Roman Literature," et 
cetera. 

And let it be noted that every one of 
these more than one hundred essays is a 
masterly treatise or, more than that, a 
profound and comprehensive stud}^ of 
its subject, made from an exhaustive 
investigation of its literature, — an ii/- 
vestigatic^n which would have enabled 
the author to write volumes instead of 
a single essa^ on the theme. Doctor 
Lord tells us that in the preparation of 
a single lecture he not infrequently read 
and consulted as many as three hundred 
books. This being the quality and 
measure of his work, two or, at most;, 
three such volumes as have been de- 
scribed might of themselves well be 
considered a respectable contribution to 
our literature from a single brain. But 
the " Beacon Lights " series, with its 
almost boundless motive and scope, pro- 
ceeds through its nearly six thousand 



JOHN LORD. 29 

pages to unfold its panoramic riches; 
the eight vohiines succeeding those just 
mentioned presenting, under their ap- 
propriate titles, from Mohammed and 
Charlemagne to Hildebrand and Wy- 
clif, the mighty figures of the '' Middle 
Ages"; from Dante and Angelo to Calvin 
and Galileo, the poets, the theologians 
and discoverers of the '' Renaissance and 
the Reformation " ; from Cleopatra to 
George Eliot, the " Great Women " of 
history ; from Richelieu and Cromwell 
to Mirabeau and Napoleon and Webster, 
the modern orators, warriors, and mas- 
ters of diplomacy ; and, under the titles 
of '' Modern European Statesmen," 
" American Statesmen," and " Nine- 
teenth Century Writers," the whole 
galaxy of great names in statesmanship, 
diplomacy, and letters, from Chateau- 
briand, Metternich, Washino^ton, and 
Franklin to Cavonr, Bismarck, Clay, 
Lincoln, Sir Walter Scott, Byron, and 



30 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

Macaulay. These ten volumes are, in 
truth, what they have been eloquently 
described to be : " An epitome of human 
achievement in religion, government, 
philosophy, science, art, architecture, 
society, reforms, politics, war, education, 
and literature — the whole forming a 
philosophically connected view of the 
world's life and progress for five thou- 
sand vears, marking the currents that 
have directed the movements of race? 
swayed empires, shown the force o 
ideas, and controlled the destinies g 
mankind." 

Professor C. B. Galbreath, the elc 
quent State Librarian for Ohio, ha 
aptly said : '' No one enjoys the oppoi 
tunitv to read the best literature of his 
time who has not access to ' Lord's 
Beacon Lights of History.' " It is, 
however, the suo:orestivcness of these 
volumes equally with their treasures of 
historic information which constitutes 



JOHN LORD. 31 

their signal value to students and lit- 
erary readers, — through opening vast 
and varied perspectives of human action 
and thus offering new fields to the im- 
aQ-ination. 

As a literary artist, Doctor Lord has 
not taken the exalted rank which he is 
unquestionably destined to occupy ; al- 
though a constantly growing number 
of the most critical English and Ameri- 
can scholars is being added to the list 
of his advocates — becoming, indeed, his 
enthusiastic admirers. Among these 
former was the eminent historian, the 
late Professor James Anthony Froude, 
while, on this side of the Atlantic, edu- 
cators as distinguished as the diplo- 
matist, Andrew D. White, formerly of 
Cornell, and President Francis I. Pat- 
ton of Princeton, are foremost among 
those paying tribute to his literary 
talent ; indorsing in substance the ver- 
dict of their professional associate, 



32 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

Professor Mowry, of the Salem (Mass.) 
public schools, who, in characterizing 
the work of the author of '' Beacon 
Lights," ventures the superlative eu- 
logy that " no mortal man ever threw 
such learning, s^uch wide reading, such 
graphic delineation into his discourse 
on a historical theme." " His lectures," 
he adds, " are a series cf paintings." 

It is possible that Doctor Lord's life- 
occupation as an itinerant lecturer, 
breeding the accustomed " contempt " 
of '' familiarity," may have temporarily 
retarded his recognition as one of the 
greatest lights of his literary class. 
However this ma}' be, it is apparent 
that ample amends are about to be of- 
fered for this somewhat belated appre- 
ciation. As with the critics and scholars, 
an increasingly large section of our most 
intelligent reading public is now turning 
towards his works — and with an increas- 
ing approval and admiration. The 



JOHN LORD. 33 

cause is not far to seek. Doctor Lord 
had within himself all the elements 
which make literary work endure — the 
complete equipment of the literary 
\V(;rkman, the mental and spiritual ma- 
chinery that impresses the classic stamp. 
He had scope, philosophy, and imagi- 
nation. To these he added industry, 
tireless and relentless. He had the 
artistic sense in its highest perfection. 
He writes histor)- like Plutarch : his 
character-studies are portraits. Of these 
it has been pertinently said that, " being 
the study of real heroes, they yield all 
the delights of fiction while imparting 
real information" ; as it has again been 
affirmed of these delineations by a dis- 
tiiiguished American jurist and diplo- 
mat, " the writer clothes the bones 
of history with fiesh and blood, and 
moulds its lessons with human form, 
color, and expression." 

vSometimes the author of " Beacon 



34 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

Lights " completes the sum mar}' of an 
epoch or a hero with an epigram or a 
single flashing phrase, as when, compar- 
ing the Fetidal period with our own 
-times, he distinguishes that the " Middle 
Ages recognized the majesty of God, 
the nineteenth century the majesty of 
Man " ; and again, he avers of Cardinal 
Richelieu that he was " cunnino; as a 
fox, brave as a lion, supple as a dog, 
all things to all men— an Alcibiades, a 
Jesuit." These piquant tcmches he em- 
ploys sparingly, hovrevci', as no writer 
steers wider than he of the merely loud 
and sensational in cc^niposition. On the 
contrar}', the very purity and symmetry 
of his diction may produce with the un- 
discriminating the effect of symmetr}' in 
natural objects — that of diminishing the 
grandeur of real proportions. No error 
could be greater than one in this direc- 
tion with reference to the vigor of his 
expression. He is a writer of first-class 



JOHN LORD. 35 

power and intensitA\ It is simply true 
that he combines with force a grace and 
facility not elsewhere exceeded. From 
the point of \\q\v of literarA' manner 
alone, such essays as those of the " Bea- 
con Lights " series rise to the dignity 
of true art- works as really as do any 
corresponding papers by Froude or 
Carlyle or INIacaulay ; there being only 
this discrimination, that the method of 
the American writer is wholly without 
affectation — which to many will appear 
the finer art of literary treatment, in that 
it leayes the mind of the reader entirely 
with the objectiye theme imder exami- 
nation. 

Placing his work page by page by the 
side of eyen such picturescpie art-studies 
as those of John Ruskin, esteemed a 
quarter of a century ago the exemplar 
in English composition, the craft of the 
American does not suffer by the com- 
parison, while it enjoys the adyantage of 



36 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

being applied to the illustration of veri- 
ties which do not fade when considered 
apart from their literar}- treatment. 

Such is the quality of Doctor Lord's 
work, the "art that conceals art " — illus- 
trating also the open secret that the rare 
and final achievement in everA' art is 
nature's own simplicit}'. He tells 3'ou 
his story Avith the directness and fervor 
Avith Avhich he might recite it in ani- 
mated conversation sitting with a'ou 
through a summer evening on his hos- 
pitable veranda. But there is always 
economy of statement — always reserved 
poAverand imaginative intensity, the per- 
fection of true artistic composition. The 
discrimination of a character or an era 
of Avhich Macaulay would make an epi- 
gram and Carh'le a series of interjec- 
tions, he places before you in direct vivid 
phrase. Of Carlyle himself, for instance, 
he says: ''This hyperborean literary 
giant, speaking a Babylonian dialect, 



JOHN LORD. 37 

smiting- meixilessly all pretenders and 
quacks, and even honest fools, was him- 
self personally a bundle of contradic- 
tions, tierce and sad by turns. He was 
a compound of Diogenes, Jeremiah, 
and Doctor Johnson ; like the Grecian 
cynic in his contempt and scorn, like 
the Jewish prophet in his melancholy 
lamentations, like the English moralist in 
his grim humor and overbearing dog- 
matism." No more comprehensive or 
graphic delineation has been presented 
of the dyspeptic Scotch essayist. 

Again, characterizing Bonaparte, he 
says : '' His egotism was almost super- 
human, his selfishness most unscrupu- 
lous, his ambition absolutely boundless. 
He claimed a monopoly in perfidy and 
lying ; he had no idea of moral respon- 
sibility. He had no sympath}^ with 
misfortune, no conscience, no fear of 
God. He was cold, hard, ironical, and 
scornful. He was insolent in his treat- 



38 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN, 

ment of women, brusque in his manners, 
severe on all who thwarted or opposed 
him. He committed great crimes in his 
ascent to supreme dominion, and mocked 
the reason, the conscience, and the rights 
of mankind." ' : 

To Doctor Lord's style has been ap- 
plied the epithet "luminous." The 
ascription is defective in its failure to 
convey the full conception of its true 
quality of light. His diction is a limpid 
stream of simple eloquent speech run- 
ning in the broad sunlight itself, and 
flashing to the reader's mind every tint 
and hue of the mental region through 
which it is directed. Whether he dis- 
courses upon the lofty mission and 
supernal visions of the Hebrew Judges 
and Prophets, the scholastic philosophy 
of Thomas Aquinas, the conquests of 
Charlemagne, or the stimulating social 
diversions of the salon of Madame de 
Recamier, you are with him at every 



JOHN LORD. 39 

turn and instant of the proceeding, ab- 
sorbed, eager, and, at times, entranced. 
No quip of fanciful or oblique speech, 
no trick of posing on the part of the 
author, for a moment diverts conscious- 
ness Irom the central point of attention, 
Everything is direct, forward, intense, 
powerful. It is only at tlie end that the 
reader realizes the refinement of the art 
by whicbx he has been captivated. 

Any account of Doctor John Lord 
which failed to note liis surpassing qual- 
ifications for his vocation as a critical 
historian would be curiously deficient. 
His aptitude for his calling was partlj^a 
gift and jiartly an acquisition. He had 
the historical instinct, or genius, para- 
mount. But to this he added labor. 
Beginning his career with a little spe- 
cial training in theology and arefi'eshing 
absence of solid or accurate information 
along every other line of inyestigation, 
(except history), through the necessity 



40 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

of becoming himself a teacher of his 
fellows he gradual)}^ extended his ac- 
quirements until his command of the 
whole range of knowledge which con- 
cerns the history of human common- 
wealths was little less than amazing. 
As he review^s the rise and progress of 
states, intricate questions are dissected 
and touched upon by him with the firm 
hand of the specialist in each depart- 
ment — questions of the constitutions of 
governments, diplomacy, finance, reve- 
nues, tariffs, coinage, and the subtlest 
problems of political economy. No 
writer, indeed, has surpassed him in this 
catholic mastery of the components of 
history. The land regulations and the 
distribution of wealth under the Caesars, 
the legal codes of Justinian and Con- 
stantine, the devices for revenue by the 
English sovereigns, the financial expedi- 
ents of Law and Talleyrand and Neckar, 
the tariff provisions of Henry Clay, and 



JOHN LORD. 41 

the National Banking scheme made 
notorious by the enmity of Jackson, are 
all described and passed' upon by this 
divinity student turned historian, as 
familiarly as he pictures the policy of 
the mig-hty papal Hildebrand or the 
spiritual conceptions of Saint Ambrose 
and Chrj'sostom. 

That, however, which is even more 
remarked by the student of Lord is the 
element which has been called the 
" historical imagination," — that clement 
which is the creation at once of aptitude 
and of learning. In these days of i-apid 
book-making, when knowledge is too 
frequently the result of cramming, when 
the complex data of historv are swiftl)^ 
overhauled and historical characters 
recast in a night, to meet the demands 
for a short-cut process to information, 
even reputable essayists are content to 
make brief special studies of single his- 
toric periods or characters and to lay 



42 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

the result of their hasty investigation, 
dressed in more or less meretricious rhet- 
oric, before the public. Not such were 
the conception and methods of the au- 
thor of " Beacon Lights of History." 
Doctor Lord's knowledg^e of history is 
fundamental. Each separate essay from 
his pen rests upon, as it is illumined by, a 
familiarity with the entire story of the 
world's past, whose events appear as the 
common furniture of his mind, and whose 
literature, for convenient illustration, is 
at his instant command. His survey of 
the historic domain is as with a far-flash- 
ing search-light from a hilltop ; or it may 
be said that his study of the past has 
been so comprehensive, so detailed, so 
elaborate, that its events lie before him 
as in a bird's-eve view on a single shining 
field of vision— every period related to 
its antecedents and successors, every 
incident and character with their 
abounding analogies through the ages. 



JOHN LORD. 43 

By such immense conceptions of his 
mission, by such tireless studies, is the 
imagination of the historian formed. 
And it is safe, and not extravagant, 
to say that no expositor of the past has 
equaled Doctor Lorci in this quality of 
comprehension. 

His perception of resemblances, his 
groupings of characters and incidents, 
separated from each other by the re- 
motest periods and the most diverse 
environments in time, form for the 
reader a constant succession of startling 
and agreeable surprises, while throwing 
abundant light on the subjects under 
examination. Thus, while reviewinof 
the story of the Hebrew Mordecai and 
Esther, his mind turns toward Richelieu 
and Madame de Maintenon in modern 
France ; the horrors of St. Bartholomew 
suggest their parallels in those inflicted 
in the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, 
and of Magdeburg by Tilly ; the char- 



44 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

acter of Catharine de Medicis recalls the 
savage Fredegunda and even Mary of 
Scotland ; Csesar, the Roman patrician, 
like the French aristocrat, Mirabeau, 
appeals to the masses against his own 
order; Cato in his narrow-mindedness 
and conservatism finds his analogue in 
the modern Wellington ; the Roman 
Constantine is described to be as politic 
as the French Henry IV., and Sully, the 
minister of Henry, as faithful a servitor 
to his prince as was Burleigh to Eliza- 
beth ; the wise Aristotle is the fore- 
runner of the modern many-sided Hum- 
boldt; the peculant Verres arraigned 
by Cicero is the fitting historic com- 
panion-piece of the spoliator, Hastings, 
under the invective of Burke ; the names 
of Charlemagne and Peter the Great of 
Russia are linked together in their labors 
to establish an empire, while the Jewish 
David is associated with Washington 
and Alfred the Great ; the sage Con- 



JOHN LORD. 45 

fucius is joined in comparison with 
Solomon ; and St. Augnstinc, in giving 
shape to the new doctrines of the 
Church, is likened as a benefactor to 
Alexander Hamilton who fixed the prin- 
ciples and financial policy of the great 
Republic ; Cicero is observed to have 
won his legal reputation in the defense 
of Roscius, and Daniel Webster in the 
Dartmouth College case ; the learned 
and spiritual Arius of the early Church 
is described to be as reproachless in 
character as our modern Parker or 
Channing ; and the name of Oliver 
Cromwell is associated with that of 
Abraham Lincoln in respect of the 
solemnity of his burdens and his enjoy- 
ment of a joke. 

These and hundreds of similar paral- 
lels glow like gems on the pages of 
Doctor Lord's works, casting their 
searching side-lights into every corner 
and crevice of historv. 



46 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

But it is not as a specialist, or chron* 
icier of the mere details of the past, 
that the author of "Beacon Lights" is 
in his prime. He is essentially and above 
all an expounder of the iiicamng of the 
world's transactions, the artist philoso- 
pher, who projects the X-ray of his 
analysis through the very body of his- 
toric epochs and detects the pith and 
core of their significance. Read his 
essay on the " Feudal System " and the 
identical structure of the Middle Ages 
rises before you — the causes and origin, 
the central thought and purpose of 
those somber, suppressed centuries made 
clear as the noontide of a modern era. 
Read his " Saint Bernard," and the be- 
ginnings and philosophy of that yast 
and complex scheme of monasticism, 
which for centuries covered human 
society, are pictured and realized as dis. 
tinctly as the character-casts in a mod- 
ern novel. - - . 



JOHN LORD. 47 

As an expounder of the philosophy of 
history, indeed, the author of " Beacon 
Lights" must be given a high place 
among the select feAv who have at« 
tempted the difih cult role of interpreters 
of the past. His investigations do not 
assume the formal pretensions of the es^ 
says of Guizot or the German Hegel, 
though possessing the merit of equal 
profundity, while his conclusions are 
placed before the reader with a direct- 
ness and lucidity to which those more 
famous continental expositors can lay 
but slight claim. 

But stepping out of the past, Doctor 
Lord has met and recognized the prob- 
lems of his own time. He has antici- 
pated the anarchies and despotism of 
an age of concentrated wealth — the 
threatened impoverishment and enslave- 
ment of men under the reign of the 
billionaire: and he boldly challenges 
the fallibility of that political economy 



48 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

under which such a consummation of 
human history is made possible. 

These great and just praises having- 
been accorded, it remains to be ad- 
mitted that there is an aspect in which 
Doctor Lord's claims as an historical 
critic are to be received with a more 
qualified approbation. The reference 
is to his peculiar theological bias. It 
is the single limitation of his great en- 
dowment as a philosophical reviewer of 
the world's past — the fly in the amber 
of his literary reputation, judged from 
literature's standpoint. Abandoning 
the profession of the ministry for the 
pursuits of the historical essayist, he 
did not sufficiently gain his own consent 
to abdicate the functions of the theolo- 
gian, and is tempted at times to apply 
the rules of dogma to phenomena, im- 
patient of their measurement. Amid 
the splendors of dissertation on the most 
momentous events there falls at inter- 



JOHN LORD. 49 

vals oil his pages the shadow of a too 
narrow theological creed. He wavers 
for an instant before according full 
praise to Thomas Jefferson, because 
Jefferson, as he confesses, had largely 
imbibed his sentiments of liberty from 
the study of Voltaire and the sneering 
deist, Rousseau. While picturing with 
intense colors the darkness and degen- 
eracy of the Middle Ages, he is still 
moved to idealize that hopeless epoch 
by reason of its being an age oi faith, as 
against the more materialistic even if 
more humane character of modern cen- 
turies ; forgetting that neither the hard- 
ness of the Feudal times nor the hu- 
manity of the present can be justly 
attributed to the greater or less amount 
of reHgious belief in the two periods. 
Influenced by the same mental antece- 
dents, he inclines to rehabilitate the 
Biblical David after the murder of 
Uriah, while holding Napoleon to the 



50 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

full measure of responsibility for the 
assassination of D'Engliien; ignoring 
the identical quality of their respective 
crimes against humanity. 

It is clearly the case of the old-school 
Calvinistic New England Andover of 
his student days holding at the end of 
half a century the rein over her gifted 
son as he appeals to his modern audi- 
tors. Recognizing the essential sanity 
and liberality of his nature, it is easy to 
credit that fifty years' delay in the date 
of his birth, or the difference of a de- 
gree of latitude in the locality of his 
theological training, might have con- 
tributed to Doctor Lord's literary fame. 

But strangely enough, the fault, or 
defect, here pointed out has in no mate-' 
rial sense affected the solidity of his 
conclusions as a historian. It is per- 
ceived rather as a tendency, or moral 
bias, which his i"eason combats, than as 
a flaw warping the integrity of his final 




\ni. JOHN LORD AT 75 YEARS. 



JOHN LORD. 51 

judgments. It is a subjective rather than 
an objective entity, — a cast of thought 
which may qualify, for a time only, the 
estimate of his work at the severe bar 
of literary tribunals, but which cannot 
conceal from that wider republic of in- 
telligence to which he appeals his 
splendid contribution to historical criti- 
cism and knowledge. Everywhere on 
his pages there is evidence of the 
noblest qualities of heart and brain — 
tolerance, breadth, candor, and just 
discrimination. 

But as the expounder of history it is 
in ethical quality that Doctor Lord is 
supreme. It is here that he is seen to 
tower into a region where he is easily 
among the foremost interpreters of the 
past. He is, in a word, the ethical his- 
torian par excellence. It was, indeed, 
with this purpose, as he confesses, of 
applying the moral touchstone to the 
widest possible compass of facts, of 



5--2 /IN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

drawing lessons from the entire field of 
human experience, and of becoming an 
ethical teacher in the broadest sense 
that he obtained his own consent to 
abandon the profession of the ministry. 
His inherited instincts from his New 
England ancestrv, as well as his theo- 
logical training — which, if in those yet 
early times it prescribed abnormal 
rigidities of creed, still inculcated the 
imposing sanctities of moral obligation 
— left him no other choice than that of 
being a moral instructor. And loyally 
did he pursue his mission. Every 
problem of history became to him a 
problem of righteousness. In this 
aspect and quality his writings possess 
their especial and pre-eminent value. 
Against the tendenc}^ of every epoch, 
against every confused and puzzling 
transaction of histor}', whether of states 
or individuals, he presses the ethical 
question until he has forced from it the 



JOHN LORD. 53 

lesson of Right. Whether he analyzes 
the conduct of Cassar in the overthrow 
of the Repubhc, the motives of Crom- 
well in becoming- the dictator of the 
Commonwealth, the zeal of Becket in 
defending ecclesiastical prerogative, or 
the morality of Frederick and Napoleon 
in their wars against states, the inquiry 
pursued is still for the fundamental 
good of humanity. And when the in- 
quiry is ended, the answer is rendered, 
not in the rhetoric of the casuist, not in 
the distorted phrasings and megalo- 
phonous sophistications of Carlyle, con- 
fusing power with right and success 
with justice, but in tones clear and 
certain as the strokes of an evening 
bell, and appealing to the common 
sense and conscience of mankind. 

Writing of Cromwell and the execu- 
tion of Charles, he says: '' Cromwell 
was at the bottom of the affair as much 
as John Calvin was responsible for the 



^4 yiN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

bvirning of Servetus. There never has 
a great crime or blunder been com- 
mitted on this earth which bigoted, or 
narrow, or zealous partisans have not 
attempted to Justify. Bigoted Catho- 
lics have justified the slaughter of St. 
Bartholomew. Partisans have no law 
but expediencv. All Jesuits— political, 
religious, and social, in the Catholic and 
Protestant churches alike — seem to 
thmk that the end justifies the means, 
even in the most beneficial reforms ; 
and when pushed to the wall b}" the 
logic of opponents will fall back on the 
examples of the Old Testament. In de- 
fense of lying and cheating they will 
quote Abraham at the court of Pharaoh. 
There is no insult to human understand- 
inor more flas^rant than the doctrine 
that we may do evil that good may 
come." 

Writing of the Conquest of Silesia 
and the aggressions of Frederick the 



JOHN LORD. 55 

Great, he saws : " S(j lar as a lilc de- 
vested to the military and political ag- 
graiidizeiiient of a country makes a man 
a patriot, Frederick the Great will re- 
ceive the plaudits of those men who 
worship success, and who forget the 
enormitv of unscrupulous crimes in the 
outward glorv which immediately re- 
sulted, — \ea. possibly of contemplative 
statesmen who see in the rise of a new 
power an instrument of the Almight}^ 
for some inscrutable end. To me his 
character and deeds have no fascination 
,iny more than the fortunate career of 
our modern millionaires would have to 
one who took no interest in finance. It 
was doubtless grateful to the dying 
king of Prussia to hear the plaudits of 
his idolaters, as he stood on the hither 
shore of eternity; but his view of the 
spectators as they lined those shores 
must have been soon lost sight of and 
their cheering and triumphant voices 



56 /iN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

unheard and disregarded, as the bark 
in which he sailed alone put forth in 
the unknown ocean to meet the Eternal 
Judge of the living and the dead." 

Once more, referring to the partition 
of Poland^ in which Frederick partici- 
pated, he writes : *' Might does not make 
right by the eternal decrees of God 
Almighty written in the Bible and on 
the consciences of mankind. Politi- 
cians whose prime law is expediency 
may justify such acts as public rob- 
bery, for the}^ are political Jesuits — 
always were, always will be : and even 
calm statesmen, looking on the over- 
ruling event, may palliate ; but to en- 
lightened Christians there is only one 
law : ' Do unto others as yc would that 
they should do unto you.' Nor can 
Christian civilization reach an exalted 
plane until it is in harmony with the 
eternal laws of God." 

Of the great minds illuminating 



JOHN LORD. 57 

France in the era succeeding the Revo- 
lution, he says : '* These kings and 
queens of society represented not mate- 
rial interests, — not commerce, not man- 
ufactures, not stocks, not capital, not 
railways, not trade, not industrial exhi- 
bitions, not armies and navies, but ideas, 
those invisible agencies which shake 
thrones and make revolutions and lift 
Ihe soul above that which is transient 
to that which is permanent, — to religion, 
to philosophy, to art, to poetry, to the 
glories of home, to the certitudes of 
friendship, to the benedictions of 
Heaven." 

These and hundreds of other similar 
reflections profusely current in every 
volume of Doctor Lord's writings mark 
the standard of a morality such as has 
been rarely applied to the measure- 
ments of history, — a morality which is 
that of neither the casuist nor the ascetic, 
but which is as loftv as it is clear, and 



58 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. 

which is fit for the instruction and in- 
spiration of all ages. In an epoch like 
the present, soreh' tempted by the glit- 
ter of material riches and power, it is 
the qualit}' which pre-eminentl}' com- 
mends his work to the rising: oreneration 
of students, and which forms the price- 
less jewel in the crown of his fame. To 
such translators of the past the debt of 
intelligent gratitude is an ever-filling 
cup, since, neither dazzled by power nor 
warped in reason bv the conventions of 
mankind, they are our beneficent instruc- 
tors, keeping their vision clear and 
single to that eternal law of Right which 
we name justice, that sleeps not nor 
changes through the changing centuries, 
but keeps its righteous and loyal reck- 
oning with the in-stitutions and deeds of 
men. 



DEC 29 1S39 



